Local Ecologist

Writing on his blog, Connected by Nature, Ken Lo described Marsh Madness "as a personal exploration of wetlands – marshes, bogs, fens, swamps, prairie potholes, vernal pools – during the course of the annual NCAA tournament....“Brackishology” is a play on “bracketology,” a term used by sports folks to talk about the selections and matchups or brackets in the elimination tournament."  Consider this essay our entry. Image: Minetta Stream, Viele (1865) 1874 "water map" of Manhattan, David Rumsey Map Collection ( source ) Minetta Brook once ran above ground in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York.  Emerging between 21st and 20th Streets, it flowed through the western section of Washington Square Park to the Hudson River. Image: Minetta Brook, ca. 1700s, "Cultural Landscape Report, Washington Square Park (2006)" ( source ) Image: The Minetta Waters, 1817, "Washington Square Park Phase 1A Archaeological Assessment (2005)"( sour

Image: Washington Square Park (East) from Washington Place, 1892 (photo of photo display) Image: Washington Square Park (East) from Washington Place, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I read Kim Foley MacKinnon's Boston Family Scavenger Hunt on the Union Park Press blog which was originally published at TravelingMom.com .  I contacted founder Kim Orlando and received permission from both Kims to publish the clues, only.  The answers can be found here . Fenway Victory Gardens, Boston, April 2004 The scavenger hunt is based in the Back Bay and Beacon Hill neighborhoods of Boston and suitable for children under 12 years of age.  Kim Foley MacKinnon recommends taking photographs of each location to create a scrapbook of the scavenger hunt. The clues Read Between the Lions  Slow and Steady Wins the Race  Where Three Famous Women Hang Out at the Mall  The Ugly Duckling was One  Mrs. Mallard Leads the Pack  Former Cow Pasture  Mr. Toad’s Friend  Where the Governor Works  Three signers of the Declaration of Independence rest here  Where Boston Cream Pie and the Parker Roll were Born Remember, the answers can be found in t

Former Manhattan Savings Institution located on Broadway at Bleecker Street Thank goodness for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day because in his Bloom Day post , Les reminded his readers of his Winter Walk Off challenge. On your own two feet , leave the house and share what can be seen within walking (or biking) distance of your home.  Your post does not have to be a picture-heavy travelogue like mine, unless you want it to be.  Maybe instead you will find some unusual patterns, interesting shadows, signs of spring, a favorite restaurant or shop, questionable landscaping or local eyesores.  Whatever, just keep your eyes and mind open, be creative and have fun, but don't show anything from your own yard .  (emphasis his own) I do not own a car and my bicycle is in storage (in Massachusetts), so I walk (and occasionally ride the subway). I usually pack my camera but lately I have been taking photographs of specific things as opposed to "things that catch my eye." An

Original Post, January 18, 2011: In our post about the fire hydrant marker , I wrote that the next post in this occasional series would be about the fire alarm box.  Instead, it is about an air quality monitoring device I spotted at the Bleecker Street oil leak site. On December 6, 2009, a significant oil leak of No. 6 heating oil from a boiler room serving 3 and 4 Washington Square Village on Bleecker Street (NYU faculty housing) was discovered.  The university stated that 16,000 gallons of oil were "lost," 4,005 gallons were "recovered," and the remainder which is "tar like" is contained in the surrounding soil.  Community and news outlets such as The Villager reported that "about 5,000 gallons of the leaked No. 6 heating oil" were removed and "about 11,000 gallons of congealed oil in the soil" remain.  (It is interesting to note that community and news media refer to the incident as an "oil spill" while the univ

The Manhattan-Bronx Route and the Brooklyn Route of New York City's subway system were completed in 1904.   In 1902 the privately-held Rapid Transit Construction Company established the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) to operate the two routes ( The New York Subway, Its Construction and Equipment, Interborough Rapid Transit, 1904 ; republished in 2004).  The development of the station at Columbus Circle is the subject of this post.  (This post does not cover the BMT, the Independent Subway System, or even a history of the IRT.  For this information, visit nycsubway.org .) Reading a recent Untapped New York post titled Central Park West, Over the Years , I was struck by the changes in the urban tree canopy on Broadway north of Columbus Circle between 1901 and 1912.  (The 1912 photograph of Columbus Circle shown in the Untapped New York post was taken in the winter, I think, so street trees would hardly stand out without their leaves.) I commented on Michelle Young'

This past weekend was positively spring-like but the full buds of the magnolias buds did not burst.  Instead we are offering magnolias in bloom at the Portland Classical Chinese Garden.  The photograph was taken on March 21, 2004 by Kelly Brenner of Metropolitan Field Guide . Image: Magnolia flowers courtesy of Kelly Brenner/ Metropolitan Field Guide ( source ) View the complete Garden photoset at the Metropolitan Field Guide's Flickr page.  Also, Kelly is a fine artist and created a large postcard collection based on "draw different aspects of the garden." The postcards can be seen here . See more bloggers' gardens in bloom at May Dreams Gardens .

From Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (pages 148-149): The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole.  Genghis Khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus himself might have drunk it.  Cleopatra might have bathed in it.  Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it.  Sometimes water was liquid.  Sometimes it was rock hard---ice.  Sometimes it was soft---snow.  Sometimes it was visible but weightless---clouds.  And sometimes it was completely invisible---vapor---floating up in the sky like the souls of dead people.  There was nothing like water in the world, Jim said.  It made the desert bloom but also turned rich bottomland into swamp.  Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it.  Never take water for granted, Jim said.  Always cherish it.  Always beware of it.

Last time we featured Aligustre del Japon also known as Ligustrum lucidum or glossy privet from Rafael Moro's (2007) Arboles de Madrid. Today, in this occasional series titled after Moro's book, we look at Roble lucombeano also known as Quercus suber x cerris or Lucombes oak. Kew Gardens lists this oak as Lucombe oak or Quercus x hispanica 'Lucombeana.' Image: Quercus cerris (Turkey oak), one parent of Lucombe(s) oak ( source ) Moro's Roble lucombeano is located in the Real Club de Golf Puerta de Hierro. The name "lucombeano" procede del vivero forestal de Lucombes (Exeter) Inglaterra, donde se realizó artificialmente la hibridacíon entre las dos especies de Quercus....La corteza es gris cremosa pálida, finamente divida en resaltes suberosos muy pequeños o gris oscura, más profundamente fisurada en cortos resaltes no suberosos....Las hojas son verde amarillento oscuras por el haz, verde gris con apretada pubescencia por el envés, grande

Thank you to Lin I. for the photograph of the pollarded planetree allee along a stretch of the Main River in Frankfurt. Of the trees Lin wrote: They were planted alongside the Main River in Frankfurt. I was not sure what kind of tree they were (and made a note that I should ask my forester friend - Georgia) but they were beautiful.  I loved walking underneath the canopy -- I felt transported to a different century.

We highly recommend the detailed slideshow titled Ecologies of Gold: The Past and Future Mining Landscapes of Johannesburg by Dorothy Tang & Andrew Watkins on Places [at] Design Observer . The narrative is wonderfully constructed but we were struck by the photographs, in particular the two that depict Johannesburg's trees.  With permission from Places Journal and the authors, we feature them below with the original descriptions. Image: Urban tree canopy, Johannesburg, photo by Dorothy Tang Beginning in the early 1900s, the city of Johannesburg introduced large shade trees to alleviate airborne dust from the mining belt. Originally a semi-arid grassland ecosystem, Johannesburg now boasts the largest urban canopy in the world. Most trees are alien species from other parts of the world, such as Jacaranda, Eucalyptus and English Oak, and many require large quantities of water for irrigation, an added burden to a region with limited water resources. Image: Eucalyptus gr

While completing an errand I spotted a dead house sparrow on the sidewalk.  ( Note: A photograph of the bird is at the end of this post.)  I live in NYC so I called 311 and spoke with two agreeable operators.  I was directed to the second operator by the first because the second operator handles these types of calls (dead animals).  The second operator informed me that because there was only one dead bird at the location, it was not eligible for removal by the Department of Health West Nile Virus Dead Bird Monitoring program.  The department now only takes " reports of groups of dead birds (10 or more of any species, or 3 or more waterbirds)."  I am not a forensic ornithologist; I do not know how the bird died. Before transferring my call, the first operator did mention that if I were the property owner I could place the bird in a thick garbage bag for disposal.  I was simply a passer-by.  It was only two days later while searching for dead animal removal in NYC that I

Original Post, February 4, 2011: Many of you probably know that 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit and February 3 was the Chinese New Year.  But did you know that on February 2, 2011 the UN General Assembly launched the International Year of Forests 2011 (Forests 2011)?  The UN webcast of the launch can be viewed here . The coordinating agency in the U.S. is the Forest Service.  As of this writing, no events have been posted to the Forest Service's Forests 2011 website , but an international calendar of events can be found here . Local ecologist will celebrate Forests 2011 by treespotting New York City's urban forest.  More specifically, throughout the year, we will photograph the 90 street tree species that comprise the urban forest in the borough of Manhattan. The 10 most common species in Manhattan, according to the 2005 street tree census  are: Honeylocust 23.3% Callery pear 15.7% Ginkgo 9.9% London planetree 8.2% Littleleaf linden 6.3% Pin oak 5.4% Japanese zel

An occasional series about the street tree research as well as the rules and regulations of street tree planting, pruning, and removal in New York City. Other posts in the series are Young street tree mortality in New York City , Street tree planting rules in New York City , Street tree removal in New York City , and Street tree pruning rules in New York City . Locke et al. (2010) developed a GIS-based model to predict the preferred locations for planting trees in New York City based on two types of data: need-based criteria (read: planting trees to address environmental and social challenges) and biophysical constraints.  Their research -- Prioritizing Preferable Locations for Increasing Urban Tree Canopy in New York City -- was published in the recent issue of Cities and the Environment and the authors concluded that the model is applicable to other cities. Friends of the Urban Forest tree tag, Valley Street, San Francisco The abstract reads, This paper presents a set o

Not something we typically blog about, the home bathroom, but two recent articles about plants in said space caught our attention. Image: Phyto-Purification Bathroom, image courtesy of Jun Yasumoto ( source ) The first is Jun Yasumoto 's Phyto-Purification Bathroom in which "water from the shower and the washbasin is filtered through an organic system before being re-used." Image: Phyto-Purification Bathroom mechanics, image courtesy of Jun Yasumoto ( source ) Filtration is a five-step process detailed here and involves four types of plants: rushes, reeds, water hyacinths, and lemnas (duckweed family). Image: Moss Carpet, image courtesy of La Chanh Nguyen ( source ) We spotted La Chanh Nguyen 's Moss Carpet -- the second plant-based bathroom product -- on the Cohabitaire blog.  La Chanh responded to our questions about her design intent. The idea was to a new way of having your plants inside. Not only plants in pots quietly standing in the c